Daily Archives: August 25, 2003

Confession of Faith

This is my confession of faith:

That which is real is wholly real
and fills even the gaps between
what I think seems to be real
and what I am incapable of
imagining it might be.

To divide one thing from the next
based on my limited viewpoint
denies that there is something else
capable of containing both.

What I think is the possible
limits what I can understand.

Energy does not fade away;
It changes form, perhaps, and fills
some things now, and others later.
The filling up is called living.
The emptying for another
purpose is called dying.

When I am thirsty for the truth,
a mirage does not satisfy;
but truth’s lake has different sides,
and the water from one shoreline
(though called by a different name)
is the same as from another.
It is one lake, although I can
only see the spot where I now stand.

Awareness of ability
comes with responsibility.

If I can understand this fact
but refuse to heed its lesson
I have no advantage over
those more ignorant and unable.

Without direct experience,
it is not possible to know
whether the things I have been taught
are useful or are even true.
Real meaningful experience
is rare, and always personal.

Hypocrisy means living life
as if what I believe does not
apply to me – by my actions
proving that it is not the truth.

The only sin is thinking that
I see the truth of everything.

My eyes are not that wide.
My mind is not that wise.
My heart is not that big.
I am smaller than I think.

I am less important than I would like to appear to be.
I am not in charge of everything.
I am not placed above anything.
I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

I am only made of fuel.
Something else will need that fuel when I am finished with it,
and I will give it away gladly,
having no further use for it.

This world is not a proving ground for somewhere else.
This world is not a possession to be dominated or stewarded.
This world is part of the sacred whole.

So am I. So are you.

There is no Other.

25 AUG 2003

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August in New Orleans

There was a strange quiet to the morning air
before the streetlights blinked their last, and the
pale moon still shone from its place in the sky.

It was already warm and wet, the dew
rising from the ground only a short way
and then sagging back to earth as the weight
of the motionless dawn lay like molten
lead on its shoulders. The birds had not yet
left their nests to forage in the first light,
and only a single car, its windows fogged
with the settled damp, pierced the slow ether
of the muted world as its driver gunned
its engine passing over the dark levee.

The night had done little to cool the hot
earth, and it lay bathed in its sauna steam
that clung like a low-lying, feral fog
to the drooping branches of the live oak,
elm and magnolia trees. Then, as the dark
of evening lost its hold to the coming
sun, and the dirty yellow glow of the
streetlamps seemed to be swallowed, extinguished
by the soft, hazy grip of the greasy
light, I lit a cigarette, its rough skin
like mine already made limp and sweaty
by the humid and cloying atmosphere,
and watched as my exhaled smoke gently hung
there, and then disappeared, as if absorbed.

25 AUG 2003

I guess there are SOME advantages to having to get up at 5:30 to take your daughter to swim team practice. Offhand, however, only being able to see clearly (due to both the fog in the air and the fog in my brain) during the return trip certainly puts those advantages in doubt.

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